Search Longtail - Hitwise Data

How long is the long tail? Bill Tancer of Hitwise wrote an interesting post on the Hitwise blog about the very subject. Using 3 months of their data, he pulled more than 14 million search terms. Though they are looking at a small and limited data set, there are some interesting findings:

• Top 100 terms: 5.7% of the all search traffic
• Top 500 terms: 8.9% of the all search traffic
• Top 1,000 terms: 10.6% of the all search traffic
• Top 10,000 terms: 18.5% of the all search traffic

What I found surprising, this means that the top 0.07% of the terms generate nearly 20% of all search. Tancer says, "In summary, the long tail aspect of the search is true, but the data tells us that there may really be no head or body." which I agree with, but I think he misses the concentration at the front. The Long Tail is supposed to be a steady curve to 80/20. To say there is no head is not quite accurate. Flattening out to a longer tail than was originally postulated would be correct but you can't dismiss 20% of traffic in the first 1/10 % of search terms.

I think it's also noteworthy to mention that the slice was 10 million US specific users and no adult terms. (why does everyone try to ignore the adult traffic, as if it doesnt exist?)